Medical science repeatedly confirms the human body's craving for physical exercise. Cardiovascular conditioning and resistance training, or strength training, are both extremely important in the overall health of the body. Strength training in particular offers a profound benefit to the maintenance of muscle mass, body composition and bone density. As strength training becomes more accepted as a part of our lifestyle, the need also arises to make equipment that meets a wide variety of needs in this area. For example, many individuals do not have a gym or training facility nearby or one that is convenient enough that they will alter their lifestyle to attend. For those people home fitness equipment is the desirable solution. In an effort to appeal to a broader clientele, some institutions use specified floor space for more than one purpose. In either case, home use or serial temporary institutional use, collapsibility for easy storage is a key element.
In addition, particularly in the home use, the lack of assembly is of vital importance in the success of a product. A product will not be used unless it is assembled. Some people do not or cannot assemble products for use. Those products get sent back as returns, purchased but never used, or not purchased at all. Therefore, lack of or at least minimizing assembly is greatly desirable in any product. Since most legitimate exercise equipment is fairly large, this lack of assembly and collapsibility for storage go hand in hand as highly desirable in many categories of fitness equipment, especially home fitness. Using the user's body weight as a resistance source, or lightweight resistance elements such as springs, greatly reduces the shipping weight and therefore the shipping costs. Attempts have been made to incorporate these features in varying methods, but few with success. None have created a versatile device with a great range of resistance potential that is pre-assembled. The invention as disclosed herein satisfies all these criteria.